by Piper Lennox
“You’re still laughing,” I chide, finally joining her. I feed her some bread over my shoulder. “It’s fine, though. I know it’s weird. All the men in our family have kind of strange names.”
“Tell me.”
I list as many as I can think of. “It’s tradition. They’re all discarded maiden names from the Durham family tree.”
Ruby steps around to the corner of the island to watch me, folding her arms on the countertop. It covers her nipples—I don’t like that—but pushes her breasts up like the top of a perfect heart, which I like very much. “I think it’s awesome, actually.”
“Sure.”
“No, really. I mean...my name isn’t super common, but I’ve still met, like, five other Rubys at some point.” She says my full name again, like she’s tasting it. “Yours...well. There’s nothing else like it.”
“Yeah,” I breathe, halfway between a sigh and laugh, “I’ll give you that. Never met another ‘Theoboldt’ in my life.”
“And it shortens to something normal, at least.”
“True. Very important criteria, by the way. If I continue the tradition when I have a son, a normal-sounding nickname is a must.”
Ruby says something in response. I don’t get a chance to process it.
Because, in that same second, I miscalculate where my hand is on the bread, and where the knife will be after I saw it through.
“Fuck,” I hiss, when I feel the blade saw into my skin.
Then I make my second mistake.
Instead of rinsing the wound right away, maybe asking Ruby to get me a BandAid and put it on before I even have to look at the damn thing, I inspect it myself.
It’s a small cut, but deep enough to draw blood.
And as soon as I see some rise to the surface, I drop the knife, step back, and watch everything fade.
21
Theo almost topples.
Thank God, he doesn’t actually fall or faint, but I can tell it’s dangerously close. The color in his face almost washes away altogether, the second he sees the blood on his pointer finger.
“Sit down,” I order, halfway catching him by his elbows. It’s a good thing he’s still got some muscle power left. If he actually did fall, we’d both land ourselves some nasty concussions.
Instead, though, I sink to the floor with him and grab a dishtowel from the stove, scooting around to cover his hand.
“Hey.” I snap my fingers in front of his face. “Look at me. You’re okay.”
“No, I know,” he manages, swallowing like he might get sick. I dive for an empty bowl on the counter.
No, not empty: it’s got some chopped onion in the bottom. The powerful smell would make me feel much worse, but it seems to snap Theo out of his trance. He gets himself against a cabinet and tips his head back, drawing deep breaths as he stares at the recessed lights.
“Blood still gets to you, huh?” I smile and uncover his hand. I take care to ensure only I can see the damage. “Kind of assumed you’d outgrown that, by now.”
Theo gives me a blurry stare.
“I just meant— Not like it’s a childish thing, being scared of blood. Just something you have to learn to deal with as an adult, out of necessity.”
My babbling finally ends, because his stare doesn’t ease up. Damn, where’s the Theo who can take a joke?
“How’d you know blood freaks me out?” he asks.
Oh, fuck. I didn’t offend him.
I outed myself.
Maybe I should have let the guy faint. At least then I wouldn’t have to sit here (naked as hell, let’s not forget), unfolding my own brain trying to find a good lie.
“You told me.”
Wow. Brilliant. Mail my Pulitzer Prize for Fiction via Express Mail, please.
Theo, the color coming back into his lips, wets them and shakes his head slowly. “I don’t tell anyone that. Ever. Not if they don’t witness it for themselves.”
“Well....” I wedge my hands between my knees and shrug. “You told me.”
This is true. He just has no idea the girl he told, who witnessed it for herself in this very same house seven years ago, was me.
But it still feels like a big, dirty lie. Theo didn’t tell me. He told Aria.
His eyes move incrementally over my mouth. I pretend to scratch an itch under my nose to hide it. It feels like he can see the lie dripping across my lips.
“You were drunk,” I add with another shrug. Another lie, wrapped in the packaging of truth via technicalities.
“Huh.” Theo stares at me a little longer before blinking hard and reorienting himself.
I make him stay seated while I grab the First Aid kit from upstairs. I call down to him for instructions on where to find it, which feels like yet another lie. It’s already in my hands.
While I dab peroxide on the cut, he shuts his eyes again and breathes heavily.
I know I should leave things where they are: he bought my short, sweet explanation, and all is well. But my curiosity can’t help itself.
“How did you become scared of blood, by the way?” I pretend I’m too busy cleaning his finger to look up. “You didn’t...you know, go into details, but I was wondering if anything specific started it. And is it all blood, or just your own?”
“All blood,” he says softy, “and no, nothing specific. Though I’d feel a lot less embarrassed about it if I could point to a domino effect.” Once the bandage is on, he removes the dishtowel and looks at his finger. “An old-fashioned traumatic experience would validate this bullshit nicely.”
“It’s perfectly valid on its own.” I help him stand. “We don’t owe people explanations for our fears.”
With a defeated flourish, he drops the bread knife into the sink. “Do you have any?”
“What, fears? Of course.”
“I meant unexplainable ones.” He turns, hands braced on the counter behind himself. Chill bumps pepper his skin.
I want so badly to touch him, but I’m worried he’ll magically know I just twisted the truth into something wholly unrecognizable, right before his eyes.
There’s an unexplainable fear, right there, I think.
“Typical stuff, I guess.” I go back to the living room and start dressing; he follows, doing the same. I’m glad. Being naked while we do anything other than sex feels too...couple-y.
And that doesn’t freak me out, which is what freaks me out the most.
“Losing my teeth for no reason,” I list, stepping into my jeans, “driving off a bridge when I’m perfectly in control of the car...oh”—I snap my fingers and point at him—“and that a chair I’m sitting in will just, like, suddenly break.”
Theo laughs. The sound sends relief coursing through me. Finally, things feel back to normal. “Why?”
Because I used to be fat, I think. Because that actually happened to me once, when I was waiting at the bank for my mother to finish begging for another extension on a business loan she couldn’t pay that month.
It was an old chair, the manager assured me. The legs were cheap. If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else.
I nodded along to all his logic, letting the staff help me back up and promising them I wasn’t injured. This didn’t include my self-esteem, now splintered worse than the legs on that fucking chair.
As I ignored the stares of the other customers, I replayed the manager’s excuses. He was right; he had to be. I was overweight, sure, but nowhere near heavy enough to break a chair. It was just bad luck.
The logic didn’t help, though. Even losing that weight didn’t help. I’ve been secretly terrified of a repeat, ever since.
“You said an unexplainable fear,” I tell Theo. “Therefore, I don’t have to explain why I have it. It just exists.”
“Fair enough.” He holds up his palms, then motions back to the kitchen. “Ready to eat?”
A chance to dam up my babbling, stupid mouth? Just try and stop me.
While we eat, mostly silent, I notice something s
trange: even though I chose not to tell Theo I used to be heavy, it feels like I’m waiting for him to comment on it, just the same. Like I should have told him.
Like some small piece of me wants to, the way I’d tell a boyfriend everything about my past.
I clear my throat, but when he looks at me...I can’t get the sentence out. Admitting even that small detail feels comparable to the dread I feel at the thought of telling him everything else.
“The soup is really good.” Lame conversation, but at least it’s true. That part feels great. “What’s in it?”
“Whatever I felt like throwing in.” Theo tears some crust off his bread and dips it into the broth. “Curry paste, coconut milk, tomatoes, chicken, garlic…. And I got some fresh limes earlier, which were not easy to find.”
“I bet.” It’s not like the Hamptons are a total ghost town when summer ends, but it’s definitely not the same. It feels a bit like backstage after a play, when all the big stars are gone and it’s just the crew members left, scrambling to reset everything for the next performance. “Thank you, though. You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble. I would’ve been fine with, like, pizza or something.”
“No trouble. I like cooking.”
“Piano, cooking...any other secret skills I should know about?” I burn my mouth on my next bite. Good. I deserve it. “You seem like the kind of guy who’s a little talented at everything.”
“Definitely not,” he laughs as he wipes his mouth. He gets up and pours some wine, handing mine to me with a silent cheers. “Music is my only natural ability.”
“But not your only ability, period.” I nod at the food. “Clearly.”
“Everything else I’m even halfway decent at only happened because I picked it up while bored and decided, if I was going to do it at all, I might as well try and be really fucking good at it. Even if that meant studying it, practicing nonstop…trying to make it click, the way music did.”
I point my spoon at him. “There’s your real talent: ambition.”
“Are bored, rich housewives known for being particularly ambitious?”
“We’ve already established that, syndrome aside, you aren’t actually a bored, rich housewife.”
“Clearly,” he says, pantomiming the breasts he doesn’t have.
I sip my wine. “You’re Gatsby, remember?”
“If I recall my high school English correctly, Gatsby showed symptoms of the syndrome, too.”
“Are you kidding? Gatsby was as driven and ambitious as they come. Rags to riches.”
“Yeah,” he snorts, “with crime.”
I’d actually forgotten that detail. Instead of backpedaling, I wave my hand and move on. “Well, whatever. He was still ambitious—willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted.”
“And you think that’s me?”
“Yes, actually.” I finish my glass quickly, not caring about aeration or palates or anything else. I just want the buzz. “You’re driven to go after what you want. You just don’t know what that is, yet.”
He pauses, tongue resting against his cheek. “True. But I’d argue Gatsby didn’t, either.”
“Disagree. The man pulled himself up from nothing, doing whatever he had to, until he had it all. That’s what he wanted: everything.”
“And yet,” Theo points out, pretending to snootily swirl his glass, “it still wasn’t enough.” His eyes slide to mine. “He did it all for Daisy. And he couldn’t have her. Not the version he wanted.”
“Which was…?”
“The one he built up in his head all those years they were apart.” He swirls his glass again, watching the legs glide down. “So the man who had everything, really had nothing.”
“Huh.” I sit back and nod, even though I’d forgotten that part, too.
I’ve forgotten most of the book by now, actually. I remember the lantern on Daisy’s dock, and something about eyes. I remember Gatsby, literary prince of parties.
Theo stares at me patiently, waiting for insight I don’t have. The novel’s as faded in my memory as To Kill a Mockingbird or Fahrenheit 451, by now. But I do remember one last detail.
“I always thought Daisy was such a bitch,” I mutter.
Theo laughs so hard, he spills his next sip.
22
“You can’t be serious. Who works on Thanksgiving?”
“Healthcare workers, caterers...every poor damn soul in retail—”
Theo closes my ticking fingers up inside his hands, simultaneously warming me up and shutting me up. “Not maids,” he says firmly.
I huff and reposition myself on the chaise. We’re lying on his deck, stretched out under the starlight. That is one good thing about winter at the beach: the sky loses that perpetual-twilight glow, but gains a crisp, infinite kind of depth to it. A blackness so intense, it reminds you how small you really are.
It’s mildly terrifying when you’re looking at it alone. With someone else, it’s a comfort.
“Maybe not maids for middle-class clients,” I tell him, “but when you’re cleaning houses for multi-millionaires? You work whenever they tell you to.”
“Who the fuck’s even out here for Thanksgiving?” Theo motions down the beach at all the empty homes. “What do they need their houses cleaned for?”
“Some people come out here to work in privacy,” I tell him, “or rent their houses for off-season weddings and stuff. But most just want them cleaned because of vanity, I guess. Keeping a useless house spotless is a status symbol.”
I finish my second glass of wine, shaking my head when he offers a refill. I want clarity while I commit the feeling of being wrapped around him to memory.
“And some,” I add, a moment later, “need a clean place to bring their mistresses.”
Theo’s laugh barks out in a blast of fog overhead, but quiets when I give him a wide-eyed “I’m serious” look.
“Wait, for real?”
“Yep. They try to play it off, like, ‘Oh, I’m here to complete some work, here’s my secretary’ or whatever, but then only one bed needs the linens changed. Worst part is, they honestly think they’re being slick. But we can’t call them out on it.”
“I’d want to.”
“Trust me, my tongue has a scar from where I keep biting it.”
Speaking of: here it is again, that urge to tell Theo a truth about myself. Any truth. Even if it’s got nothing to do with all my lies.
At least it’s a start.
“My dad cheated on my mom, so I just can’t look at anyone who does that with respect.” I walk my fingers between the bolts in the chaise’s armrests. “It’s one of the worst things you can do to a person. If you don’t love them anymore, get the fuck out of their lives. Or sack up and commit to some counseling. But don’t choose someone else before you’ve let the first person go.”
Theo tightens his arms around me, and it’s only then I notice how fast I was breathing. How angry I suddenly am.
“My mom cheated, too.” His voice is quiet but heavy, decorating my ear like funeral lace. He shifts underneath me. “Did your dad leave?”
I hesitate. I already told him this story once...as someone else.
We sat close, just like this, and bared it all. The thick, ugly scars shared by kids whose parents abandoned them before they even knew what the word meant. All we knew was the space they left.
It felt incredible to meet someone who understood, and I want that connection back.
But I want it to be between Theo and me. Not Theo and Aria.
“Yeah,” I answer. “He left.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We were better off without him.” My voice cracks, but I really do mean that. Yeah, it fucking hurts when people you love can’t love you back—but it hurts a lot less than having them stick around, pretending.
“When did he leave?”
“I was four, almost five. A week before my birthday, actually.” I snort, even though it’s not funny. “He’d been
in and out constantly, up to that point, so I didn’t care anymore. I figured it was better for him to go for good, than for my mom to keep believing him when he said he’d do better.”
“I wish my mom had left sooner.” Theo yawns, stretching the arm I’m not lying on over his head. “It’s exhausting when they drag that shit out. Like trying to fix a sweater, but every few days they keep pulling the thread to screw it all up again.”
Craning my neck, I find a new thing I want to commit to memory: the stunning angles of his face from below, painted in faint moon-glow and shimmering pool lights. They combine into a dreamy, faint green color I want tattooed on my skin somehow, somewhere, even though I know no one could ever get it right.
“How old were you?” I ask softly. “When she left.”
Theo shakes his head and brings his arm back down, picking at the edge of the bandage on his finger.
I keep staring. I know it’s not exactly a fun topic—I’d rather be screwing him senseless in the poolhouse, right about now—but I’ve made up my mind to tell him about my mother, and I need him to do the same.
If I’m going to unravel my past for him, I want his lying in strands at my feet, too.
“Thirteen,” he says, cracking the silence with his answer.
“Shit.” I pull the blanket higher, up to both our chins. “Guess I was lucky, being too young to get that attached. I barely remember my dad. But being a teenager when your mom left—”
“No luck involved, Ruby. It always hurts. They’re our parents. We’re always attached.”
The solitude, nothing but our breathing and the sound of the bay churning up the darkness below, touches down again.
“Did she cheat the whole time?”
He nods. “It was a really long affair. The whole marriage, basically. Same guy.”
Once again, my sympathy strikes hard. Here I’d thought it was horrible my dad cheated with multiple women—which it was. But there’s a different kind of sting, I imagine, when the asshole spouse has an actual relationship on the side.
“Who with?”
“An ‘investor’ for her blog. Fun fact, I had to get a DNA test during the divorce proceedings.” Theo holds up his fingers with a sliver of space left between them. “That’s how close the timing of it all was.”
